I have to credit Uglychart with this find (dug it up from his archives). Dave Hermansen did not own a bird or a cage when he bought bird-cage.com, an online store, for $US1800 three years ago. He simply saw a website that was "very, very poorly done", and begged the owners to sell it to him. He then redesigned the site, added advertising and drove up traffic. Last December, he sold it for $US173,000. With the magic of the WayBackMachine you can see what changes were made from the time of his purchast to time of sale. You can see the archive data for Bird-cage.com here . So if he bought it in 2005 it probably looked like this (very '90s) In November 2005 he gave it a bit of a facelift (archives missing some JPEGs): In September 2006 the updates started to kick in with regularity: The final update before sale in December 2007 looked like this (October 2007): Which is similar to what it looks now . What I want to know is how many birdcages was he selling during the 3 year

Wow! I was really snoozing at the wheel but I have $337 to reloan in my KIVA account. All of this money has been made available thanks to subscribers to my newsletter, so even with the year that has passed at least some money has made a positive impact. Because of the number of loans made I won't detail each individually but newsletter members (and non-members) can see the complete list here . I see KIVA have a new map feature which shows where you loans have been made. Get the Fallond Newsletter Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts and stock charts website

The indices continued to undo Monday's sell off. The only watch points are the breakouts of declining wedges for volatility (VIX and VXN) as the parent indices test support. The Nasdaq bounced off support, but the Summation Index is close to reversing the recent 'sell' trigger; so this will put things back on hold. The NYSE Summation Index looked to be on the verge of a 'sell' trigger until Wednesday's advances pushed it higher. Watch how the consolidation triangle in the NYSE breaks Get the Fallond Newsletter Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts and stock charts website

I posted this on the Zignals blog ; it's a long piece and the market wasn't giving me much else to talk about. Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts and stock charts website

Sharp losses but no real volume. Significant technical damage (particularly from the MACDs) which could easily be undone with some low volume gains. Had the selling happened next Monday it likely would have carried greater significance, but don't be surprised if markets undo half of what was lost yesterday, today. The two indices I am keeping my eye on are the NYSE and Russell 2000. The Russell 2000 tested the 200-day MA in what could turn out to be a nice handle if it finds this key moving average as support. The downside is the position of stochastics in no-mans-land; suggesting further losses likely. The NYSE lost last week's 3-days worth of gains and is once again under pressure. I have marked the last band of support before dropping into the abyss (which only a bear trap could save). Stochastics are no longer oversold and approaching resistance; another opportunity to see this swing lower. Get the Fallond Newsletter Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com

Not much ado in the market as we head into the final week of vacation. Richard Crockett leads with the S&P bullish percents doing their best to roll over. Although I'm not sure what he is using as his trade signals unless he hasn't marked in the recent whipsaw signals. The S&P is in bear market territory: But have Gold miners found a W-bottom? Maurice Walker says it succintly: The voice of volume reveals that the market is now rising on declining volume. I like his 15-min QQQQ chart. Will we see the head-and-shoulder pattern come to fruition: With a matching play in the 60-min window: Russell 2000 also at an intresting junction. Small wedge broke upside following a downward break of a larger bearish wedge: Over the long term: If the QQQQ falls back to test the $45.50 to 46 area, we could see both the DJIA and S&P 500 make a test of the July lows. It is my personal believe that rather than that, they will just put in a higher low, but know one knows for sure. The d

We have had our first Blogger review from Alex Kirtland entitled " Charting from Zignals...Argh !". The review has a good demonstration video of an unusual 'bug' , which has since been solved. As the title suggests it's not a glowing review but we have we have addressed (and will continue to address) the issues Alex raised: The non-closing tabs were a challenge , but a simple correction solved this problem The jumpy menu bars can be solved by pinning the menu bars in place Wikinvest has a user friendly interface but lacks features. Stockcharts has the features, but to get the most out of it you have to pay for it ( pay more now ). StockCharts.com has a chart annotation tool which is far from perfect (just see how often the Java applet gives you a memory error without notice; this from a 5-year user of their service). With Zignals we offer the features for free and we are working hard to get the user interface as smooth as possible. Zignals stock charts now

My Netvibes feeder has seen a drop in activity from some key financial blogs. Known early day casualties included Trader X amongst others, but the past 4 months have seen another swather of blogs go silent. Many without reason. One can only assume the author(s) are okay - but perhaps their absence reflects a form of capitulation; who wants to write about a "bad market". Trader's Narrative reappeared today after a lengthy 2-month absence. Babak has an impressive 1,843 RSS Subscribers. High Chart Patterns has posted once in the past three months, the most recent post now a month old. It offers a newsletter service which is spoken highly of by Uglychart ( most recently ) and MovetheMarkets . Raw Greed did suffer a Hack attack but the site looks to be online. The last post was made in late June; it has/had(?) been in operation since 2005. One Guy's Investments of Travis Johnson hasn't seen a blog post in 4 months. It usually posted on a monthly basis. Formerly A

Oil looks set to challenge its 2008 highs, setting in place the ultimate top for oil [July highs] and the end of the cyclical bull market in oil. However, this topping pattern for oil will occur within the context of a secular bull market for commodities. So the secondary push lower, likely to occur in the latter part of the year into early 2009, will provide an excellent buying opportunity as the global economy benefits from the deflationary environment. As a hypothetical one should watch for an initial move to the the 50-day MA. The nascent rally will probably stall here because of the added supply at this traditional resistance level. A modest retracement down to $120 should see the return of demand and a more forceful challenge on the 50-day MA. This second challenge on the 50-day MA will produce the break and bring the rally to fibonacci retracement levels around June 2008 lows, but with the possibility of extending the rally to around $140. This final push will probably breakdown

The Nasdaq Bullish Percent indicator has again in the process of rolling over around the 42% mark; off typcial bear market tops around 50% and well off bull market tops where 70% of Nasdaq component stocks enjoy point-n-buy signals. To have the index rise at much as it has with only 42% of component stocks on 'buy' signals is not the kind of form strong rallies are made of. The area to look for a bullish divergence between the breadth indicator and the parent index; the Nasdaq undercuts July lows but the bullish percents stay above the 25% mark. The percentage of stocks above the 50-day MA shows similar struggles as it bumps into the 60% resistance area. Ultimate Oscillator switches to a 'sell' signal. The Summation Index always gives the smoothest signals. It too has come up against May high resistance and is still some 250 points off bear market top territory. Technicals still strong (particularly the MACD). Get the Fallond Newsletter Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market

With the light volume one shouldn't read too much into technical breaks, but as I noted in my newsletter there were breakdowns for the Dow and S&P: However, both of these indices have support to look forward too. The one index which doesn't have much support to work with is the NYSE: It's an interesting contrast to the Russell 2000 which is ready to break to new highs: In bull markets small caps carry more weight as money switches from 'safe stocks' to more speculative issues, but usually the relationship is a simple case of leader and laggard; not the current case of small caps on the verge of breaking key resistance while large caps look to break major support. The only fly in the ointment would look to be the insipid month of August where little major action occurs. Will this situation drift into September before it gets resolved? Possibly. Get the Fallond Newsletter Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market aler

August is not known for its hectic trading. Is there anything we should be watching? Maurice Walker comments on weekly charts: As a technician I monitor the weekly charts very closely because they are the compass, map, and life jacket of the future direction of the market. But the bad news bears insist that we should ignore the improving technical situation that is occurring on the weekly charts and believe them. They continue to snub their noses at this rally and for the past four weeks they have been telling us that the market is going to drop tomorrow, well tomorrow has come and gone and so far our rising trendlines remain in tact. Three weeks ago we witnessed the Russell 2 K weekly chart's histogram, move into positive territory. Last week the Nasdaq's weekly chart had the histogram turn positive, and now this week the QQQQ's weekly chart followed suit, as its histogram moved into the positive column. The Russell 2 K has been up for 6 consecutive weeks and is now testi

In line with the latest release of Silverlight charts on Zignals I have a post on the Zignals blog which looks at three stocks picked from the Blogosphere: Wall St. Warrior featured Amgen ( AMGN ) AC Investor took a look at Apple ( AAPL ) Downtowntrader latest pick from a couple of days ago was PetSmart ( PETM ) -eom- Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts and stock charts website

Headline charts points to the lack of participation of the NYSE index to the rally. I think small caps have greater relevance for supporting an advance (which are doing very well), but it's one to keep an eye on as it was an index I had ignored and hadn't realised it was struggling. Yesterday's action looks to have created new bearish rising wedges for large cap indices. Note the bearish divergence in slow stochastics and sell signal with the bear cross of -DI over the +DI as 50-day MA fails as support. Bad omens, but it's dependent on price breaking rising support of the wedge. Dow theorists will be watching the transports. Similar bearish wedge to the Dow, although it trades above both 50-day and 200-day MAs. These are the watchpoints for the rest of the week (in addition to HeadlineChart's NYSE). Get the Fallond Newsletter Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts and stock charts website

With the dollar strengthening and the Euro weakening I took another look at the S&P priced in Euros. If the strengthening dollar (weakening Euro) can boost U.S. equity prices we will soon see a nice 'buy' signal following a positive test of the 2003 (yes - "2003") lows in the Euro:S&P relationship. A rally in this relationship could quickly work its way towards 2007 highs and a chance to confirm a double bottom: The positives on this chart are the dual doji at 2003 support and the rising MACD histogram. Both work on the background of oversold short and long term stochastics following a successful test of the early 2008 low. So while the dollar priced S&P shows some leg work to do as it builds a handle, it might not be as far away from the good times as some might otherwise think. Get the Fallond Newsletter Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts and stock charts website

Will a dollar rally become the new hype machine for the market shrills? Certainly the dollar has been hurt over the past 6 years. But with gold double topping and other commodities weakening there is a good case for a lengthy rally in the greenback. The recent complex (quad-)bottom in the dollar also coincided with a bear trap, while the push above 74 broke the 6-year declining trendline. This aggregation of positives should be enough for a challenge on 80.72 resistance with a long term (5-year) objective of 92.17. Any strength in the dollar will be bullish for equities. The more broader indices push higher the stronger any buying will be when they slip into retests of prior lows. If during such retests the dollar continues its advance (with oil and gold likely weakening even more) then bears will find their directional positioning increasingly tenuous. Get the Fallond Newsletter Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts and stock ch

August bumps along nicely for bulls. How did the Stockcharts.com ers see it? Richard Crockett isn't seeing much love for Gold bugs: Maurice Walker's Olympics words of wisdom: My country did not send me seven thousand miles to start the race, they sent me seven thousand miles to finish it. Dow and S&P seeing some solid bullish trend signals. Interesting closing observation: This week brought more bullish signs with it. On 8/5 the DJIA got a bullish Aroon cross on its daily chart, then three days later it confirmed a new up trend as the Aroon up rose above 70 and the Aroon down fell below 30. The Aroon oscillator confirmed the move as move above +50, signaling a new up trend. The S&P 500 followed the Dow on 8/8, as it got a bullish cross and confirmation of a new trend all in one day. Moreover, both the DJIA and the S&P 500 got a bullish cross on the ADX indicator in the daily timeframed. The direction movement indicators (DMI) on the ADX, got a bullish cross on Fri